Chronic. A voltage drop is brutal. The price of cobalt has made a leap into the void since June. It has lost nearly a third of its value. Under the violent shock, the blue cobalt… A return to earth, after, it is true, a ascent in the stratosphere. Electrisé by speculation since 2016, he never ceased to climb towards the blue skies. In the swatches of the metals, investors only had eyes for the blue metal. The point to make him tu the bar of $ 100 000 (86 400 euros) a tonne on the London stock Exchange, at the end of march. The cobalt records.
However, the electric car was the star of the stands of the World of the automobile, which closes its doors Sunday, October 14, in Paris. The american brand’s iconic Tesla and the French pioneer Zoe from Renault that they are not alone on the track. All of the manufacturers follow more or less in their footsteps. But the consumer doesn’t scream ” it’s the watts that I prefer ! “At issue : the price of batteries. The “zero emission” equal zeros on the cheque.
The cobalt weighs heavy in addition. It takes about 15 pounds under the hood compared to the 6 grams that are necessary in a smartphone. Speculators have pulled out the calculator and put in perspective the plans on the comet electric and the rarity of the metal. The operation has caused an explosion in the counters of the Stock market. But Elon Musk, true to his visions of the iconoclasts, says he is ready to raise the bet of a battery ” without cobalt “. And in the laboratories, the engineers are working hard to imagine a storage of electricity, less expensive, reducing the doses of the materials, the more expensive, such as cobalt and lithium.
Has the search for a new seam
In parallel, the mining groups, eager to snap these beautiful margins, have put overdrive. The example of the swiss Glencore group in which the production of cobalt has increased by a third in the first half and that table on a doubly…
